


so still this broken melody

by cartoonmoomba



Series: I walked around the world until I found my gravestone [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: 3.4 Spoilers, AU: WoL, Alexander spoilers, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-25
Updated: 2016-10-25
Packaged: 2018-08-27 00:01:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,303
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8379622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cartoonmoomba/pseuds/cartoonmoomba
Summary: "So, Arbert," and there it is, that strange split second of heartbreak. "Does this make us friends, then?"





	

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Final Fantasy XIV does not belong to me.
> 
> AN: Hello friends it is, your friendly neighborhood WoL/WoD trash. Looks like this is a thing now. (I am also playing a personal game of how many lyrics from “Equilibrium” can I use as a title.)

_._

_._

"What bothers you, friend?"

Footsteps on the soft grass startle Lieal out of the vigil she had not meant to fall into. She glances over her shoulder and spots Cid, smiling down at her with soft concern. She fails to smile back.

Alexander spreads out before her, the colossus glorious and frozen in its own bubble of time. The chill of the Hinterlands breeze sends goosebumps up her arms and at the back of her neck. 

"Forgive me," she says in lieu of greeting and turns back to stare at the primal. "I am plagued with heavy thoughts of what just occurred."

The Garlean makes a noise of acknowledgment and settles down beside her when she makes no motion of shying away. His tall stature acts as a buffer against the cold wind and Lieal draws her knees up to her chin, burying her face in them.

"Would it be better to talk about it?" Cid offers after moments of silence. "It does not do well to dwell in one's own dark thoughts for too long."

Hidden by her legs, the Mi'qote can't help but allow a small smile. "I suppose..." Trailing off, she glances once more out on the scene before them. Far below she can just make out the smudges of blue that are Wedge and Biggs prodding away at the barrier. "What you said to Y'Shtola, about Roundrox no longer being the naive child the Codex was willing to open up for..." She halts once more. There is silence between the two as she struggles to find the words. "That was me once," she allows at last. "An idealistic, naive child who believed in the good of the world. Before all this, before Meteor, before Mother found me and took me." She shudders for the blink of an eye before falling still again. "I mourn the girl I can no longer be, whose eyes have been opened to the truths of our world. At times I find myself missing her and the simpler times she had." 

The sound of the Thaliak River below is a small comfort. Lieal wishes for her home in Lavender Beds, for the warm hearth and the soft duvet of her bed. Both are just a teleport away but there are things to be done - _there are always things to be done..._

"Grim thoughts indeed." The words of her friend make her want to both cry and smile at the same time. She chooses to scoot closer instead and lean her head against his broad shoulder, allowing herself to be shielded against the world entirely. Cid brings one arm around her in response and draws her close - ever willing to offer what small comfort he can. Lieal has lost count of the number of times they have done this since that painful day in the Waking Sands. 

"We all miss the past," Cid says softly at last and Lieal knows he talks of his childhood and the people he once treasured - some whom he continues to mourn. "But the future lies ahead of us, bright and ours for the building. We must create a better world for the ones who will come after we are naught but souls in the Lifestream." She presses her face into the leather of his jacket and the familiar smell of oil that lingers there.

"I don't want to build a future," she mumbles. "I want to be happy. Can't I be selfish?" 

His laughter shakes her to the bone. "Of course you can be, my dear. You may do whatever it is you want to."

"At the expense of the happiness of those that rely on the Warrior of Light?" She questions and already knows the answer. The topic is a tried one between them - there are few who know of the war that wages inside of her between duty and heart better than Cid nan Garlond, the prodigy who deserted his home and all that came with it. 

Cid quiets. "Yes," he replies. "Such is the burden we must bear." Lieal appreciates the honesty that comes with his words. He presses his lips to her hair and she tries not to cry.

"I'm so tired, Cid. When will this all be over?" The question is a tried one, too, and both know the answer. Cid does not speak.

At last Lieal pulls away and wipes at her eyes. "Thank you. I would be alone now, if you would." 

"Of course." Cid allows her the space she seeks and retreats back to the Shortstop. Lieal returns her gaze to Alexander and wonders what it would be like to be trapped in a moment eternal with the one she loves.

The grass behind her rustles. "Friend of yours?" The now familiar voice of the Warrior of Darkness speaks. Lieal turns with a Fire spell already burning at her fingertips. 

The man scoffs. "Put that out. I haven't come here to fight, though I am glad to see your senses have come back to you since the last time we met." 

That night at the pier where she was quite ready to die by his hand. Lieal remembers it well. "What have you come here for, then?"

"What, can't a Warrior of Darkness have a friendly chat with the Warrior of Light?" His voice mocks her, but he does not leave nor approach closer. 

"Come closer then, friend." He grits his teeth at her and she smiles back. "If you have not come here to kill me, then what do I have to worry?" In a final blow she turns her back to him, choosing instead to focus on the colossus. "It is quite the view here and I would like to enjoy it in peace."

He does not abide by her words and she does not hear him teleport away or ready his axe. "I think you need that peace, too," she says softly after a moment. "We both do." 

The Warrior's laughter is dark but he approaches nevertheless and drops down some ways beside her, far enough that he is no shield against the wind but close enough that if she were to reach out her hand, and he his, they would touch. Lieal observes this with some degree of curiosity. "What do you know of wanting peace," the Warrior scoffs under his breath but unlike their previous encounters, his words lack heat. 

"I know nothing and everything of wanting it," the Miqo'te snaps back. The man manages to bring out an ire in her and a strange sort of exhaustion. There is something about his face that makes her soul ache. She chances a glance at him out of the corner of her eye. 

He looks as exhausted as she feels, with a pallor that is sickly and dark circles under his eyes. She is once more reminded of the methods that the Ascians use to traverse the world and almost asks him the question burning the tip of her tongue.

"What are you looking at?" The Warrior snarls at her. His eyes meet hers and then move away. "What in the seven hells is that contraption?" 

Lieal hums low in the back of her throat. "Alexander. A primal - a machine - created with a perfect world in mind that it would seek to achieve." Her ears droop a little. "A friend is in there, trapped in a perpetual moment of time..."

"Your doing?" She flinches at the insinuation that lies in those words.

"Yes," she says and then, "no. She chose to be there with the one she loves." A moment of silence and her voice lowers. "I hope she is happy, an eternity spent with the one her heart holds most dear..."

The Hyur beside her doesn't bother replying. "There's that voice again," he mutters under his breath. Lieal picks it up nevertheless and her ears perk back up in curiosity.

"That voice?" She asks and faces him. A Protect spell surrounds her, her skin hardened to stone - she feels safe enough were he to lunge. "Whatever do you speak of?"

"That lovesick tone of yours," the reply comes and Lieal flinches back in shock. She can vaguely recall a memory - a dream, she had thought - of this man standing above her in bed, and his face seeming so much like the face of the one she cannot remember. 

"So you did come when I was sick, then," she muses. Her stomach feels sick at the implications of what could have been; she was foolish to think no one could find her in the sprawl of Gridania. "You could have killed me then."

The Warrior turns to face her at last and _oh,_ there it was, the pain in her chest at the sight of him. "I could have killed you many times," he informs with a smirk. "You're not the most cautious woman."

Lieal holds back from telling him what she wants to: _I am ready to die, sometimes, I am ready to give up all those who weigh themselves on my deeds and embrace that eternal sleep._

The exhaustion from before, chased away by the warm presence of Cid, makes its return. "Why do you come, then?" When he makes no reply she pushes forward. "What is your name then? I cannot keep calling you Warrior of Darkness if you refuse to kill me."

She does not expect an answer but he speaks anyway. "Arbert," he says at last and that name strikes something deep within her, like a gong hitting a bell. The breath escapes her lungs and she sees stars.

It passes in the blink of an eye and he is once more in her field of vision. Lieal's mouth feels dry. "Arbert," she says and that pain, that pain - it comes and goes in a flash. "Finally, a name to put to a face. Would you have mine too, or are you satisfied with my title alone?"

He rolls his eyes at her like she is some sort of child. "Out with it then," he says. There is something disorienting about sitting here, exchanging pleasantries with the one who's previously tried to harm her and her friends.

"Lieal," she offers him and thinks she can see a split second hesitation on his face, a pain similar to hers, before it too disappears. "Pleasure to meet you, Arbert." His name in her mouth feels cottony and wrong, sticky sweet like caramel candy.

She holds out her hand, palm up, and grins at his stare. "No spells," she promises. He glares and puts his hand into hers.

His skin through the glove he wears is chillingly cold and heavy. She is the first to draw back, unsettled by the the feel of it and the hungry look that dances across his eyes. 

"So, Arbert," and there it is, that strange split second of heartbreak. "Does this make us friends, then?"

The sound of his laughter is jarring to hear. There is no mockery there, just surprise. "Not in your dreams."

Lieal holds back a smile at his words, uncertain how to feel at the sudden lightness that is rising within her. "We shall see about that! I have befriended many suspicious characters. You will not be the first."

Once more he laughs and she feels strangely satisfied. "I've come to this world with the sole purpose of ending it. Ending you. Why ever would we be friends?" His words carry such a bitter weight to them and Lieal aches to help him, that instinct in her to help those she can that got her into this whole Warrior situation in the first place. 

She gazes out at Alexander once more and thinks of Mide's dedication to fixing her wrongs and finding her lost love - the way she stepped back into the core of the beast, with no hesitation on her face and a smile. "We will find a way where I do not have to die," she vows. The air is heavy between them with things not quite voiced. "I trust in the Mother Crystal. There must be a way." 

He scoffs and follows her gaze. She wonders what he sees when he looks at the slumbering giant with his limbs of steel. She wonders if he thinks he must be like the Primal, with steel in his veins and ice in his heart. "There hasn't been before. What makes you think it will be different now?"

 _Because it's Minfillia who is the Voice,_ she doesn't tell him. _Because I trust and love my friend enough to know that she will do whatever is in her power to help us. Because I can hear her and the Crystal weep for all the worlds and souls lost when I close my eyes._ "It will be, Arbert. Would some small sliver of hope be too much for you to bear?"

She watches for his reaction out of her corner of her eye as she balances on the fine edge between them. "You must be so cold," she whispers and catches herself with one hand already outstretched. The Crystal inside of her yearns for its lost shard. He turns to face her with his lips set in a thin line. His eyes are the colour of the sky, of the many shades of the Mother Crystal. 

They sit there in silence for several moments like a painting brought to life, until he reaches back for her and touches his palm against hers. His fingers wind around the bones of her hand (it would be so easy for him to break her right now, she thinks--) and enclose over it. "I suppose it would not," he tells her quietly. Her Crystal hums and something in her heart shatters itself and rearranges.

"Okay," she says back, and holds on tighter. 


End file.
